Darrell Issa should share chair of House Oversight Committee with Elijah Cummings

I suggest that House leaders re-establish the Oversight Committee as a fair, neutral and nonpartisan operation. I suggest that a reconstituted committee be co-chaired by Issa and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) with membership, staff and budget equally allocated between the two parties.

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Of course, I suggest these bipartisan practices be permanent and continue regardless of which party controls the House. I strongly agree with the call by Cummings for the committee to release the full transcript of recent testimony by a conservative Republican Cincinnati-based IRS employee that discredits the notion.

What is Chairman Issa hiding, and why is he hiding it? Issa's irresponsible behavior toward Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a highly respected nonpartisan diplomat who ably served presidents of both parties, was shameful and vile.

Issa's name-calling, when he called the president's press secretary a paid liar, was juvenile gutter-talk unworthy of any committee chairman or member of Congress. Issa's waving an email from the State Department, which his interns would know was not personally signed by the Secretary of State, and using it to cast aspersions on former Secretary of State Clinton was a disgrace to the House. No lawyer would allow Issa to make such a statement as a witness under oath in a civil or criminal trial because his assertion, or innuendo, was so transparently false.

Issa withholding from committee Democrats information about witnesses was an inexcusable violation of House procedures. Every member of the media should read the press releases issued by Cummings and compare them, assessing factual assertion after factual assertion, with the statements and releases and selective leaks put forth by Issa and his taxpayer-subsidized partisan staff.

An objective reading would confirm the derecho of innuendo and misrepresentation that has characterized the conduct of the committee majority.

My solution is simple and fair. This committee should be taken out of the business of short-pants McCarthyism that it has become. It should be above politics. The chairmanship, budget and staff should be equally shared by both parties. Either the House Oversight Committee should be fair, or the House Oversight Committee majority should be investigated.